Beyond the Highland Myst(52)

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The storm raging in him stilled at precisely that moment.

"Is it true?" Adrienne finally whispered, her eyes wide and deep with hurt. Hurt and something else. Hawk saw the unspoken cry in her slate depths. He wanted to deny it, to explain the nightmare away. But he would not lie to this lass. She would have to take him in full truth or not at all; when she accepted him, if he even had any chance left, she would possess him entirely. Bitterness welled up, cloaking him in a despair so complete he almost cried aloud with the agony of it.

"I was called the king's whore," he replied stiffly.

Shadows leapt and flickered in her opalescent silver eyes. Darkness he had vowed to ease, he had fed with his own hands.

He rolled from her and rose slowly, then walked away into the night as silent as a wolf, leaving her on the edge of a precipice with his vengeful ex-mistress. He hoped she'd simply push the spiteful Olivia over the edge, but he knew it was not going to be that easy. For if he judged rightly, his wife would be in Adam's bed in no time now.

She was lost to him.

Better that he had never met this lass so that he might never have known the sweet rush of emotion, the absolving passion, the freeing wings of what love might have been.

He wandered that night, lost in memories of that time when he had been commanded by his king. All for Dalkeith and his mother, for Ilysse and Adrian. Aye, and fair Scotia from time to time when his king had been wildly foolish. Nay, there had never really been any choice.

Hawk's eyes searched the night sky for yet another falling star. He intended to wish upon every one for the rest of his life if necessary. Surely ten thousand wishes could undo one. But the cloud cover had returned and there wasn't one flicker of a star to be seen in the absolute darkness that surrounded him.




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CHAPTER 17




"oh my dear, i thought you knew!" olivia gushed.

"Go to hell," Adrienne said softly as she forced herself to her feet.

"I'm trying to help you—"

"No you're not. The only person you're trying to help is yourself—to a heaping helping of my husband."

"Ah, yes. Your precious husband. Have you no curiosity about his time at court?" Olivia purred invitingly.

"Do you really think I'm stupid enough to believe you would tell me any truth about him? A woman like you?"

Olivia stopped midsentence, her mouth hanging slightly ajar. "And just what is that supposed to mean?"

Adrienne's slate-gray eyes coolly met Olivia's heavily kohled ovals. "Just that you're the kind of woman who measures her success by the men she beds and the women she bites and one day soon, and not too far off from the look of you, you're going to be nothing but a plump, unwanted old woman with no friends. And then how are you going to pass the time?" Olivia might have taken her in years ago, but not much fooled her anymore.

"How dare you, you petite salope!" Olivia spit out. "I was only offering my help—

"By following us, spying on us, and then bringing up his past? His past is gone, Olivia." Adrienne wasn't aware she was defending him until she heard herself doing it. "Some people learn from their past, grow better and wiser. My Hawk has done that. You're just angry because you know he's not the man he used to be. If he was, he would have stayed in the gardens with you instead of spending the evening talking with me."

"Talking? He and I used to… talk… like that too. He's just temporarily inflamed with a new body. He'll get over it. And when he does, he'll come back to my bed."

"You're wrong," Adrienne said calmly. "And you know it. That's what really upsets you."

"Old dogs do not learn new tricks, sweet young fool," Olivia sneered.

Adrienne flashed a saccharin smile at the older woman. "Perhaps not. But sometimes dogs give up their old tricks entirely."

"You speak like a woman in love. Yet you wouldn't say his name," Olivia declared, arching a penciled brow.

Adrienne's smile faded. "I speak for both myself and my husband when I suggest you leave Dalkeith at first light, whether the horses are rested or not. You are no longer welcome here. Don't ever come back."

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I sure can pick 'em, can't I? she brooded as she picked her way through the garden.

Just as with Eberhard, the boat-deck-tanned playboy elite who'd manipulated her so flawlessly, she'd been a fool for a beautiful illusion. The real beauty had to come from inside. A man called the king's whore… well, what kind of beauty was there in that?

Worse yet was the thought of what she'd been about to do, would have willingly done with the Hawk, if Olivia hadn't come along. His pleas had virtually undone her defenses, and she knew full well that had Olivia not interrupted them, she would even now be lying beneath his magnificent body, just another one of the king's whore's conquests.